The subject matter disclosed herein relates to systems and methods for assessing a radio frequency environment of medical devices.
Patient data, such as physiological parameters (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, etc.) indicative of the health of a hospital patient, is valuable information for a hospital and medical personnel responsible for the wellbeing of the hospital patients. The patient data (e.g., medical data) may be retrieved via certain monitoring devices that may include medical sensors. The monitoring systems may transmit the patient data over wireless links at or near real-time for further processing. In some instances, the wireless links may be more convenient than wired links, but may not provide the level of reliability of wired links, based at least in part on the fact that the quality of the wireless communication may deteriorate due to various causes, such as interferences, link obstruction, network congestion, etc. Furthermore, certain locations within the hospital may experience more problems (e.g., weak signals, signal loss, network congestions, etc.) than other locations due to uncontrolled interference, multipath signal propagation, signal absorption, uncovered areas, and the like, associated with a location.
Uncontrolled data loss via wireless links may result in delays in acquiring data for patient monitoring systems. As such, it may be beneficial to develop systems and methods that may improve the reliability of transmission of medical data.